Sunday, October 27, 2013

squibnibs & squibnuvs

A thousand lovers would never feel so right for you as me
A thousand lovers would never feel so true for me as thee
But you're a squibnib and i'm a squibnuv
And squibnib and squibnuv ought never ever love

How can people live by wisdom of this sort??
It's time to appeal to a higher court!
But you're a squibnib and i'm a squibnuv
No, squibnib and squibnuv ought NEVER ever love

Is there no law of nature, no law of goodness true?
They ain't erected nothin' that'll keep me from you!
So you're a squibnib and i'm a squibnuv
And squibnib and squibnuv ought NEVER ever love?

I'll sleep on the floor outside your door
Until you say YES, or it's me that you abhor
For you're a squibnib and i'm a squibnuv
As squibnib and squibnuv, we'll show 'em how to love

Sunday, October 20, 2013

our fire

Astride our love
in timeless tumescence
you'll unmask infinity

My lips will linger
in your velvet valley
Our fire will set you free

These hands will name you
This heart will claim you
These dreams ever turn to thee

My lips will linger
My lusts will linger
My length will linger
My loins will linger
My life will linger
in your velvet valley
Our fire will set you free

Sunday, October 13, 2013

escape from planet earth!

Picture three people in a room. One is eating, one is reading, and one is injecting heroin. What would you say if i told you all three were engaging in the same basic activity?
For this to make sense, one has to accept the following premise - every human you've ever met has been in about fourteen different kinds of pain, of which he or she is conscious of maybe three. The society humans have constructed over the past ten thousand years has strayed so very far from our most basic nature, that you have never met a healthy human. If you met one such, you might be amused or shocked, but you wouldn't recognize yourself in this creature. It is only through layers of rationalization and denial that modern humans are able to function at all. There is compelling biological, archaeological, and other scientific evidence to support this premise. This article is about none of those.
This article is about behavioral evidence.
This article is about escape.
How does a creature in pain respond? By trying to make it stop. If that proves impossible, the creature will try to escape that pain as much as they can.
If you step back and look at behavior objectively, you'll suddenly see around you a world of humans who are trying to escape reality virtually every single day of our lives.
This isn't about obvious escapes, like a flophouse full of strung-out addicts. This is about a universe of behaviors that affect our brains in the same way as "drugs". This is about adrenaline. Stimulants and sedatives. Dopamine and endorphins. I won't insult your intelligence by listing the things in this world that might render one anxious or depressed. I won't ask what percentage of people know that their most basic life-sustaining and intimacy needs, will always be met.
Or even met tomorrow.
Here are the ways that humanity is in a constant state of trying to flee this planet. And here are the drug realities that underlie them all.
FOOD
Oh, what a surprise - when we eat sugar, fat, or salt, our bodies powerfully reward us with feel-good brain chemicals (dopamine, a neurotransmitter with a hotline to the brain's pleasure center, and opioids, psychoactive chemicals which induce a feeling of euphoria). Chocolate and spicy foods promote the release of endorphins (neurotransmitters that reduce sensations of pain). You know the line about food not being love? In terms of brain chemistry, that's a lie - food IS love. Even though culinary highs pale in comparison with an orgasm or first kiss, no cookie ever made someone feel rejected or worthless. Food isn't love? I'm sure everyone's gotten that memo - but it seems a whole lot of people aren't impressed. And i won't even go into caffeine, other than to say thank you America, but i've avoided the amphetamine-style monkey you offered me as a child. Nine out of ten people aren't so lucky, but them's the breaks.
ADRENALINE
"Adrenaline junkies". So often the truth slips out in moments of glibness. All those testosterone-filled types chasing highs in unimpeachably legal ways. Get those dudes on a commercial! Um, except for the gamblers, that's not so macho. Adrenaline is a hormone that causes a rise in heart rate and body glucose. It constricts blood vessels and dilates air passages, making us hyper-responsive to stimuli. Any chance that under conditions like those we'll remember our miserable love lives or unpaid bills? No, we didn't think so. Get us a parachute/snowmobile/motorbike/bungee/four-wheeler/gun-with-one-bullet, stat!
RELIGION
Does religion feel good? Yes. Does it take us out of ourselves? Great googily, yes! How much further outside your own reality could you get than focusing on an invisible creature with the power to do ANYTHING? Do not underestimate god. Neurologically-speaking, for a believer, god (or its childhood equivalent, the imaginary friend) is just as real as any living being...which can obviously be immeasurably rewarding, given that each believer exercises complete control over god's identity inside their heads! On a more basic level, here is what religious thought does to the brain - it renders the anterior singulated cortex (the part of the brain that controls anxiety) less active. That sounds nice. Just be careful with this drug. Long-term faith has been linked to atrophy of the hippocampus, which can lead to depression and Alzheimer's.
HUNTING & SHOPPING
I put these two together because of the ridiculousness (but also, sadly, accuracy) in the stereotype of the old couple - she can't understand his obsession with hunting or fishing, and he can't understand the unending hours she spends shopping. Yes, mensaites, it's actually the same activity. Dopamine production is similarly stimulated in both. On a good day, both activities add adrenaline to the mix. Hunters are accused of being insensitive to the animals they slaughter, but if that were literally true, hunting would be far less popular. Indeed, it is the subconscious awareness that prey animals think and feel in much the same way as us, that makes hunting attractive. Put another way, if hunters knew that their prey were emotionless machines, many would become bored. The awareness that prey think and feel makes hunters relate to them, because hunters can imagine being hunted. It is this identification that feeds the adrenalized aspect of hunting. Any hunter or fisher who was truly blind to the suffering of other animals would be a full-on sociopath (as opposed to the semi-sociopaths we all are).
PORN/SEX/LOVE
The brain activity in pornography addiction is identical to drug abuse.
An orgasm is the simultaneous activation of pleasure pathways, and deactivation of defense pathways. Seeing an attractive stranger fires no less than four separate pleasure-related neurotransmitters. The chemicals in semen relieve a woman's anxiety or depression, and lessen her pre-menstrual pain. A woman having regular sex will become addicted to these chemicals.
In the second stage of falling in love, elevated levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin may render us temporarily clinically insane. In the third stage, release of the hormone oxytocin makes us feel profoundly pacified in the presence of our poopsie. Romance triggers the same part of the brain as cocaine.
Drugs, drugs, get your drugs here!
And if you're still unsure about the enormity of our need for escape, and the fact that for the most part it's each other that we're trying to escape from, look up a nifty little psychological condition called objectophilia.
TOUCH
Even more crippling than the sexual repression we endure in this society, is the touch deprivation. A simple hug sparks a wave of endorphins. Touch is the most immediate, effective, and safe drug. Science is only beginning to understand how we need it as much as water or air. Yet in regular social interaction, romance is the only place we sanction abundant physical intimacy, making it an unforgiving battleground in which we constantly balance reward with anxiety. So our bodies subconsciously drive us toward alternative outlets. How many who can afford regular massages, don't indulge? How many enjoy regular manicures, pedicures, or haircuts? How many of us have never NOT had a pet? How many have entered (or stayed in) a romance we didn't really want? Love is the drug? Yes, but touch is the better one.
PAIN
Do people like pain? Apparently we do.
Masochism as a way of life.
People who repeat self-destructive behavioral patterns, over and over.
Floggers and cutters.
High-altitude mountain climbers. Rugby!
The psychology behind finding pleasure in pain is a complicated thing. Both sensations emanate from the same brain centers, so there is an element of subjectivity involved. One of my lovers loved being bitten hard. Does that qualify her as a masochist? Does the fact that it gave me pleasure to please her, make me a sadist?? Nonetheless, an affinity for pain is often about conscious or subconscious self-loathing. A way of dealing with guilt or shame over what others have done to us, or what we've done to them.
Yet sometimes too, pain is simply nothing more than one hellaciously effective escape mechanism. Putting your entire nervous system on overload? A never-fail ticket to leaving all your worries behind.
RECREATIONAL DRUGS
Uncomfortable with my lumping "hard" drugs in with a roller coaster or pie? Get over it. While i don't deny that breaking a reality TV addiction is easier than getting over crack, the stimulation of particular brain centers is a goal that can be achieved in an almost infinite number of ways, and no drug expert would claim that psychological considerations aren't a big part of any addiction. It might be helpful to simply consider hard drugs as just the first escape mechanism to be "outed" in our understanding of addictive behavior. Nor is it only a drug's effect that delivers us out of life - it's also how others treat us when we're under some influence. Whether happy buzz or acid trip, nobody chooses that time to have a "we need to talk" moment with us (and even if someone is reckless enough to do so, you'll hardly be held accountable for your response). For a creature trying to escape pain, that alone is worth the price of any ticket.
ALCOHOL
Alcohol stands apart from other recreational drugs, but not because it doesn't belong in their category - it does. If you've ever used the phrase "drugs and alcohol", implying that they're not the same, you have a deficient grasp of pharmacology and cultural relativity. That said, alcohol gets to stand alone, because no other drug allows you ALL THREE drug escapes, and often at the same time. Alcohol allows you to feel good, bad, or both, on the way to feeling nothing at all.
SMOKING
The first few cigarettes of the day affect the same part of the brain as heroin and cocaine, and can boost your mood, suppress anger, and enhance concentration. Hardly news. But an unspoken function of cigarettes as an escape mechanism has nothing to do with nicotine. Every time a smoker lights up, particularly in public, they're rewarded with a few minutes of untouchability. No matter how shitty things are, they'll be left alone for that little window of time. For all the whining smokers make over their status as social lepers, a part of that is insincere. Many are as addicted to those five minutes away from the world, as they are the nicotine.
MUSIC
Depressed people suffer from low serotonin. Music stimulates serotonin production. It also stimulates endorphins, and has a salutary effect on the healing process. For someone who's spent a lifetime avoiding the weaknesses and pitfalls of drug use, this one irks me a bit. I'm just a sad junkie after all.
BOOKS, MOVING PICTURES, VIDEO GAMES
Do you know why we love movies and books? Why they arouse such passion and devotion? Because our brains don't know the difference between fantasy and reality. Studies have shown that doing an activity, or just thinking about doing it, triggers the same brain response. Have an athlete win a race, or just think about doing so, and her mind won't know the difference. Hence, we have the ability to bond with fictional characters just as deeply as any real person, but with one very important difference. Fictional characters will never, ever, ever, EVER turn on us. The comfort they provide today, they'll be ready to provide thirty days or thirty years from now - no questions asked. Are you beginning to understand why the average person spends NINE ENTIRE YEARS sitting in front of a television? It's the greatest drug ever, and nothing comes close. Understood this way, what percentage of the people imprinted in your memory as your dearest friends, are people you never met, or never even existed? Video games are a fascinating development of the genre. And it's here where the premise of this article takes on its most frightening weight. Video games go one step beyond fiction or fantasy - in video games, you're no longer YOU, and actions (even the most hideous) have NO consequences (except in our minds, which can never forget). Under those conditions, video game players spend hours, even days, in uninterrupted play. What level of misery must a life be in, to spend days pretending to be someone else? And i won't even get into the hyper-violent nature of video games. Unraveling that psychology is a multi-layered, even contradictory mess. But can we all agree that people who are strongly drawn to graphically violent fantasy are dealing with some powerful demons?
SPORTS
Just as alcohol stands apart, so too does spectator sports fill a gap that goes well beyond the escape of "normal" television. Humans are social creatures, and any who don't get enough social intimacy will become off-balance. Unfortunately, male indoctrination has traditionally produced enormous intimacy issues. The average male simply doesn't have the emotional tools needed to react with others in a healthy manner. This is profoundly obvious in the dysfunction of romance, but not so clear in male/male relationships, and a huge part of the reason is...sports. The bonding that males experience therein, is a substitute for actual emotional intimacy. Sports becomes an enormous source of passion, such that it's very often the only thing males are truly comfortable talking about (whether among strangers or those one has known for decades). And talk they do! For hours - team prospects, statistics, fantasies, favorite players, favorite games, even sports-related social issues. Competitive urges can be safely sublimated. And sports is the ultimate piggy-back drug. Is there any setting more natural for the serial downing of beer, beer, beer? For many males, high fives and chest bumps are the only real male physical intimacy they'll ever know. While watching a game, the adrenaline rushes and heartbreaks are a veritable ocean of brain chemical emotion. Now if only some genius could find a way to inject sex into sports. Wait, i've got it! Naked women jumping around on the sidelines! What? Too obvious?
CONCLUSION
Can you picture a close-at-hand future when all psychological profiles (or...shudder...dating profiles) will prominently feature "escape mechanisms" on the list of characteristics? Is it easy now to think of any person you know (including yourself), and break down their life in terms of escapes?
This list is far from comprehensive, of course. Our electronic modern media cocoons are the very definition of social isolation, false camaraderie, and escape. There are workaholics, cult members, comedy junkies, greed junkies, charity junkies, serial killers, trekkies, and a billion other escapees out there.
At this point, the reader might be inclined to say, "Wait...all these activities damn near encompass EVERYTHING humans do! It seems like you're pathologizing life, wrob. What about the simple desire for pleasure? Isn't a certain sensate hedonism just part of what it means to be human?" To that i answer, yes. But it's all about context, and need. We're biologically constructed to be pleasure-seekers, but we're not psychologically constructed to need pleasure (or pain, or excitement, or numbness) as a never-ending escape. A certain amount of escape is natural, too...we are creatures of imagination. But when escape becomes the only thing that makes life bearable, something has gone terribly off-balance.
Put another way, try to imagine how you would feel if you were cut off from your own favorite escape mechanism, suddenly and forever. Might you not become sad and withdrawn? Agitated and anxious? Edgy and short-tempered? Might not your behavior be indistinguishable from any "junkie" in withdrawal?
What then, is the answer? A continued search into what it means to be human. Our species' self-awareness is still in the infancy stage. As science continues to learn about our essential needs, physically and psychologically, we'll continue to understand just how dehumanizing is this world we've created for ourselves.
And in a more immediate sense, awareness of our profound investment in escape mechanisms can help us cope when they take over our lives. Addiction has very little to do with willpower, or the lack thereof. If you find a certain behavior (or substance) has you in a seemingly unbreakable grip, remember the word "replace". You'll never quit any addiction without replacing what it brings to your life. Holes will always demand to be filled. But fill them you can, with behaviors over which you can exert more control. Those words may seem idiotically simplistic to someone with a painkiller addiction...but Alcoholics Anonymous aren't nearly as dumb as they seem. Fill someone's brain with the power of community, get them hopped up on daily doses of religion...it may be borrowing from peter to pay paul, but you'll more closely resemble a functioning human being. And be less likely to set yourself on fire, or wake up naked in the mayor's gazebo. Or some such.
And i adore the phrase "painkiller addiction", by the way. It's got to be the most unintentionally-revealing addition to the english language in the last century. It describes exactly who and what we are, as a people.
Painkiller addict?
You've never met someone who wasn't.

P.S. In the seconds after publishing this online, i felt one of the sweetest drug rushes of my life. We found another one...

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

"Animal Rights, Human Rights"

(Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation)
-by David Nibert
2002
Do you know what it feels like to hold the most important book you've ever read?
I've now known that feeling. Twice.
This book joins "Sex at Dawn", by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, on a very short list - the only absolutely essential books for anyone wishing to understand humanity.
Stylistically, the two are quite different. Ryan and Jetha's work is as entertaining as it is informative, while Nibert tends toward scholarly dispatch. But before you're even done with Chapter 1, you'll understand the import of what you're reading. More concisely than anything i know, these books pull the veil off humanity, pre- and post- agricultural revolution.
There is also one striking similarity - misleading titles. Expectations of a study of animals (or sex) are quickly superseded. "Sex at Dawn" (http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2012/02/sex-at-dawn.html) is about human nature, and "Animal Rights, Human Rights" is about how far we've strayed in the past ten to twenty millenia.
Nibert studies exploitation, on a towering scale. He postulates that the oppression of other animals and humans has had far more than a parallel development - that these two realities feed off and reinforce one another. He diverges from many other animal rights advocates by averring that oppression is NOT about individual attitudes. It's institutionalized, embedded in the most basic structures of our society, and has given rise to every major social ill (sexism, racism, classism, speciesism...). To move beyond this barbarism, a reformer's attitude cannot be enough. Revolution is required.
Cruelty and abuse don't come naturally. For the vast majority of our species' history, we lived in harmony with ourselves and others. Thus, the rationalization required to make oppression feel right requires strong socialization. You can see the foundations as early as Socrates, who argued that "...it is undeniably true that [nature] has made all animals for the sake of man", and Plato, who created a hierarchy in which humans were either "gold", "silver", or "iron". Our language is constructed to make exploitation feel natural - why do we call someone a "meat-eater" rather than a "corpse-eater"? Our most basic laws and religious texts would have you believe that humans aren't even animals (or that, not long ago, women and non-whites weren't even human). Nibert replaces "animals" with "other animals", a distinction others have also made (What, you thought the "other animals" section of this website was because i'm needlessly verbose?). He takes a sociological walk through time since the development of hunting, to show how we came to be this way. In the era of corporate capitalism, our old way of thinking has led to incomprehensible suffering, wholesale extinction of uncountable life forms, and unraveling ecological disaster for any creature fond of moderate temperatures and oxygen. He points the way out - starting with getting all advocates for life on the same page, and creating more democracies of proportionate representation.
He also points to a blindness in my own worldview. In my rush to condemn the genocide of native americans, i've always put them on a pedestal, in no small part for their relatively egalitarian and non-oppressive ways. Yet their attitude toward the animals they slaughtered (filled with ritual and spirituality and reverence) is a classic example of how humans legitimize activities they're not entirely comfortable with.
How can i communicate my urgent esteem for this book? In the days since reading it, an image has popped into my mind - my own corpse, post-suicide, following the example of tibetan monks. Cradled in my right and left hand are two books.
I'm a writer. In this epoch of glorified ego, it's a pretty strong testament that neither of those books were written by me.
Sadly, we also live in the ultimate culture of celebrity. My own demise would lack the resonance of, say, a potentate or pop star. So if you know any such, particularly if they've got that lookin'-for-a-very-high-bridge look in their eyes...
Get 'em these two books. Posthaste.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

"I've Seen All Good People"

The most mind-bogglingly ambiguous lyric in rock history.
Nothing else comes close.
We're not talking indecipherable or obscure, a la "sitting on a cornflake" or "nobody heard, not even the chair". We're talking multi-layered ambiguity in a coherent, grammatically-proper lyric that means something very specific. Or something else, perhaps. Or something else altogether? Or this other thing, maybe. Or...
Recorded by Yes for 1971's THE YES ALBUM, the song is a two-part composition. It starts with "Your Move", by Jon Anderson, which was released as a single. The version played on the radio however, almost invariably includes the second part, "I've Seen All Good People", by Chris Squire. All of Chris' lyrics are included in Anderson's section...and indeed, part of what makes this all so tantalizing is that the entire lyric of "I've Seen All Good People" is one single line. There are no surrounding words to give any kind of context, any kind of hint, as to what the hell it's supposed to mean. Nor does scrutiny of "Your Move" provide any seeming answers - the only thing one finds there are chess and Lennon allusions, in the general context of "might isn't necessarily right (or wise)". Once the "All Good People" lyrics take over, all we get is the following line, repeated over and over and over, in a descending spiral:
I've seen all good people turn their heads each day so satisfied I'm on my way
With perhaps intentional perversity, the album provides no punctuation to narrow the possible interpretations.
Is the message one of resignation? Did the singer expect people to turn their heads, and wasn't disappointed? He may have hoped for some other outcome, but that didn't happen, so he's accepting the inevitable apathy of "good people", which is perhaps a euphemism for the establishment?
Is the message one of disgust? Is it the people, not the singer, who are satisfied? Does the singer see self-satisfaction in the faces of all those who turn their heads, and so embraces misanthropy?
Or does it mean that all good people are satisfied the singer is on HIS way?
If so, does that satisfaction arise from knowing the singer is leaving? Or is it from knowing that he's "on his way" to the top?
None of these interpretations are a stretch. Can there be any doubt that this almost diabolical wordplay was Squire's intention? If one were inclined to stretch for more interpretations, how many more might we find? How many more have YOU found, driving alone in your car on a dark and late night, the radio your only friend?
Don't surround yourself with yourself...

Friday, October 4, 2013

"Last Words"

-by George Carlin
(with Tony Hendra)
2009
You know those disclaimers reviewers write when they have some personal connection to their subject matter? I feel i ought write one. But my connection is simply the overwhelming sense of identification that i (and many millions more) have felt with George's material. Whatever nerve he touched, whatever vein he sourced, he's the only comedian who ever made me feel like i was listening to some funnier version of my own thoughts.
His career was towering, enduring, and unprecedented. His 60s work was impersonal and apolitical (even though he knew and adored Lenny Bruce, it took a long time for him to evolve in a similar direction). In the 70s, he realized he could be funnier if he mined the experiences of his own life, but it wasn't until the following decade that he let rip his more naked self. It was at this point that he leapt past the boundaries of stand-up to join a rarefied pantheon, along with Paine, Twain, Thoreau, King, and Mr. Bruce.
The book was culled from decades worth of association with Hendra (THIS IS SPINAL TAP), collecting material for what would be the crowning of George's career, a one-person (sorry, George) Broadway show about his life. He died a year or two shy of realizing that dream, but all the material is here. In that respect, it's much more personal than anything else he's written.
Reading the book, i'm struck with how alike George and i were, at the end. We took different paths to get here - he had a rougher youth, with larceny, military courts-martial, and decades of drug abuse. But at the end, when he sums up his understandings of life, it's an almost eerie mirror for me. He even invokes an alternate version of himself who is almost entirely me - the loner who works in anonymity, running around on no one's hamster wheel, writing his thoughts on his own time and sending them in accordingly.
Another difference between us is that he spent almost all his adult life married...which may be the reason why monogamy is the one glaring social ill he never railed against, even though he may have very much wanted to. Very few of us don't have to kiss somebody's ass, if only to keep domestic peace. If i presume too much, George, it's not without cause.
About drugs however, if i may make an observation hopefully worthy of him, we all use drugs in one form or another, and many of the distinctions between them are so much bullshit. At the most basic level, drugs alter our mind and take us out of our reality. In those terms, comedy is a much more literal drug than you've probably ever considered. In that respect, George Carlin was one of the greatest drugs that several generations of humanity ever ingested.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

"Andromeda"

ANDROMEDA
2000-2005
"I SURVIVED ANDROMEDA".
Gotta be T-shirts out there somewhere.
Yes, campers, i watched it all. 110 episodes. Five seasons. More than classic TREK and classic GALACTICA - combined. Millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars, swirling down a commode set on permanent flush. This article ends with a marathon, but do NOT take that as a recommendation to watch it. This show had everything you could want. Everything, that is, except...
Writers?
Yeah, that would have been a good idea. Hire some writers. Theirs was an unremitting failure on both levels...the story supervisor was the ultimate absentee landlord, and the script writers cranked out turd after turd after turd. I gutted out the whole series because of dedication to the genre, plus the first two seasons' tease of faltering promise, but mostly because of the Roddenberry connection. Gene's name was in the title (though his contribution was only a few scribbles decades before), and Majel Barrett (every TREK incarnation ever) executive produced...so the possibility of TREK actor drop-ins coudn't be ignored. Alas, Majel either didn't recruit them, or they had the good sense to go spelunking that week. The only ones to appear are John de Lancie (a fine job in a couple flaccid outings) and Tony Todd.
ANDROMEDA is the queen of unresolved threads. Again and again, they toss out characters and story arcs that peter away into nothingness, very often illogically. Sometime in the third season, it all settles into unwatchable dreck, as the only idea the writing staff has after the banishment of story developer Robert Hewitt Wolfe (STAR TREK: DS9) is "Let's have Dylan get his Kirk on!" The ultimate failure of the show was in never making us care about the characters. They never showed us why these people became dedicated to one another. None of the friendships resonate, and too many motivations ring false.
The directors descended to the level of the writing. Again and again, the blocking reveals the hand of someone who has no understanding of how people actually behave in tense moments.
The show always starts with a new quote...which often disappears before you have time to actually read it! What, are they afraid we'll see through the so-so writing? The title credits finally settle for good in season 3 with a voiceover that begs to be mocked with a Crocodile Hunter "danger, danger, danger". The end-credits music is so grating you'll rush for the pre-emptive stop button every time. The blasters make a noise every time you activate them, which is perhaps the most unrealistic prop choice in the history of sci fi. And the performers?
KEVIN SORBO
-Dylan Hunt (110 episodes)
Executive producer Sorbo has the requisite presence for a series lead. It's a shame they couldn't find one for him. His costuming choice after the first few episodes feels a little "casual Friday". It's not as bad as the "Members Only" season of BUCK ROGERS, but it does make you go there. And is it possible i know more about Kevin's taste in women than i should? CASTING NOTICE: seeking females - tall, statuesque, caucasian, and ever-so-faintly horsey.
LISA RYDER
-Beka Valentine (109 episodes)
Passable.
LAURA BERTRAM
-Trance Gemini (109 episodes)
A delightful presence, almost masochistically defaced. Her original look, all blue with a fun tail, turned into a visual downer that mirrors her character's decline. Her final look reminds one of a second-rate Data from FIRST CONTACT.
GORDON MICHAEL WOOLVETT
-Seamus Harper (109 episodes)
Disastrous. Inconceivably, he usurps Michael Shanks (STARGATE: SG1) as the worst sci fi actor of all time. Imagine Neelix in the hands of a hack. Horribly overacted, yet somehow the writers kept thinking he was essential. You'll just want to walk through the screen, boot the director back to community theater, and tell Gordon, "Let's do another take, but this time give me less." Then you'll give the same direction for another take. And another. Sometime tomorrow, you'll have a usable performance. How much of the blame should be laid at his feet, is a good question. Certainly the writers thought they had him nailed, but they painfully didn't - nor were they able to produce lines that made us believe he's as intelligent as advertised. It takes 109 episodes to finally produce one scene that doesn't make you cringe.
LEXA DOIG
-Rommie (109 episodes)
Tantalizing. So much potential. The one character you almost really care about. You want her android story arc to be fascinating, but like everything else, it peters off into tortured limbo. The romance you keep waiting for between her and Dylan never happens. It should have been one of the key threads of the show. Part of this is understandable, as it takes about four final season episodes to realize that she's only being shot from the head up because...she's pregnant! Apparently, sabatoging his own series wasn't enough for father Shanks. By the time she fully returns, there's too little time to salvage anything. They scoot her off in the final scene, to leave Dylan alone on the bridge. You'll silently scream "WRONG, WRONG, WRONG".
KEITH HAMILTON COBB
-Tyr Anasazi (68 episodes)
Fine potential dribbled away. They had a chance to give us an insight into a different way of thinking, with this nietschean species. A race for whom self-interest is everything (overtly, not covertly like us). But instead of fleshing out that alternate paradigm, committing to it and making it consistent, perhaps imbuing Tyr with character growth...it all just piddles away.
STEVE BACIC
-Rhade (45 episodes)
A fine performance doomed by desultory writing.
BRENT STAIT
-Rev Bem (36 episodes)
A sweet performance of a well-conceived character. Allergies to the makeup ended his tenure early, but in the big picture, maybe his allergies were wiser than he.
BRANDY LEDFORD
-Doyle (20 episodes)
A last-season android fill-in who's not as awful as you fear.
NOT-WRETCHED-A-THON (season)
-The Sum of Its Parts (1)
Treading on well-trod ground, a pleasant enough meditation on matters of genuine science fiction - the crew receive an invitation from a supposedly-mythical collective of machines who live in the empty space between star systems. Their emissary assembles into sentience, and gets to know the crew. The collective's intentions are less munificent than advertised, however. The emissary circumvents its command to disassemble, and helps the crew escape. Guest star Matt Smith offers a lovely performance.
-Its Hour Come 'Round at Last (1)
This season 1 finale ups the ante, and the octane. Harper finds a lost file in the ship's A.I., which re-boots and perceives the new crew as intruders, while resuming an ancient mission into the heart of magog territory. The ship is boarded and the action is scorching, mostly because it imperils the cushiest conceit of all sci fi serials - the foreknowledge that no cast regular will die. But character after character gets creamed. On ANDROMEDA, this conceit is combined with the notion that a ship with a nominal crew of four thousand could be successfully run by six. Even though that first conceit will never feel more contrived than in the season 2 resumption, you may have to pick your jaw up after this one.
-Lava and Rockets (2)
The series' greatest burst of romantic/sexual chemistry, in an episode that features the three most resonant characters. Dylan is pursued by bounty hunters in an "appropriated" tourist barge with an outraged novice pilot (Kristin Lehman - JUDGING AMY). Under fire, the two of them come to appreciate each other. Tyr and Rommie search for them in the Maru. A little sexy, a little human, a little loosey goosey...
-The Lone and Level Sands (3)
Tight, compelling, and (most importantly) a sci fi serial idea that feels like something you've never seen...and you can't imagine why someone didn't think of it before. The Maru flees from pirates into deep space. They're rescued by a ship that Earth sent out centuries earlier, the Bellerophon. Equipped with the most powerful engine ever, of pre-slipstream design...meaning the faster-than-light travel comes with time distortion - to the crew, a journey of centuries has been measurable in years. The Maru unable to get home, they get caught up in a mutiny triggered by the knowledge that Earth is now a slave world. Rommie has a tantalizing romance with the ship's captain (TREK luminary Tony Todd - CANDYMAN, BEASTMASTER: THE EYE OF BRAXUS). A well-written story elevated by Todd's performance.
-The Unconquerable Man (3)
A passable little alternate reality exploration, as the original events of the story reverse, with Dylan dying and Rhade trying to resurrect the Commonwealth 300 years later.
-Day of Judgement, Day of Wrath (3)
An offering given the juice of sentimentality, in a marriage of STARGATE and ANDROMEDA (a second-rate series plus one that's sliding into third). Guest stars Michael Shanks and Christopher Judge play A.I. avatars in a death struggle. Not awful at all.
-The Heart of the Journey, part 1 (5)
Okay, actually kinda wretched. But it's worthwhile for feminist afficionados, as it's perhaps the only time in sci fi history that female regulars outnumber males on a starship crew. The writers play this up with an estrogen-enhanced slow-mo. There's also a blatant tribute to STAR WARS that would be sad if this series had worked, but in the context of a five-year failure, is kinda nice.